Who Packed the Tambourines?

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This is the d’var Torah I delivered at Congregation Neveh Shalom on January 30, 2026.

There are weeks when the Torah feels like a metaphor, and there are weeks when it feels like a live news feed. This is a live news feed week. Shabbat Shirah arrives just as we mark the return of the final hostage, and suddenly the word “unprecedented” feels laughably insufficient. Crossing the sea didn’t come with a user manual, and neither did living through this moment. Being Jewish right now. At the same time, honestly, it’s a very Jewish moment – the kind where you want to sing, cry, and ask God a few pointed questions, probably in that order. 

Parshat Beshalach gives us the dramatic climax of the Exodus story. The Israelites stand trapped between Pharaoh’s army and the sea. Panic sets in. Complaints fly. Moses prays. God responds, somewhat tersely, “Why are you crying out to Me? Tell the people to move forward.” The sea splits, the people cross, and only after they are safe do they break into song: Shirat HaYam, the Song at the Sea. This is not a calm or tidy redemption. It is loud, emotional, and deeply human. 

Shabbat Shirah teaches us something essential about Jewish song: it does not come before the danger, but after survival. The Israelites don’t sing as a plea while the Egyptians are still chasing them. They sing once they reach the other side, shaken, stunned, and alive. And even then, the song is complicated. It holds awe and fear together, relief and disbelief in the same breath. 

Miriam leads with timbrels because, apparently, she packed musical instruments while fleeing slavery. Faith, it turns out, sometimes looks like irrational optimism and emotional overpacking. The midrash suggests she believed there would be something worth singing about, even if she couldn’t yet imagine how. 

This week, as the final hostage is returned, we are standing in that same in-between space. Not healed. Not finished. But on the far shore of something that felt endless. Like the Israelites, we didn’t know how this would end. And like them, we discover that survival doesn’t erase fear; it teaches us how to carry it differently. 

So on this Shabbat Shirah, we sing. 

Not because everything is resolved. 
Not because the world feels safe. 
But because we reached this moment together. 

We sing because silence would be dishonest. 
We sing because gratitude and grief can coexist. 
We sing because Jewish history reminds us that even after miracles, there is still wilderness ahead, and we don’t walk it alone. 

May we keep finding our voices. 
May we keep walking forward, even when the path is unclear. 
And may we always have our instruments with us, forever hopeful that eventually we will sing our song: imperfect, emotional, and real. 

Finding Our Way Through the Fog

Eve Posen2 Comments

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from living in uncertain times. Not the “I stayed up too late binge-watching something questionable” kind of tired, but the deeper fatigue of waking up each morning to headlines that feel heavier than the day before. The world feels loud. Everything feels urgent. And somehow, we’re expected to hold strong opinions, stay informed, care deeply, and remember where we left our keys. 

Parshat Bo meets us right there, in the thick of it. 

This parshah doesn’t begin with calm or clarity. It begins in chaos. Plagues still raging. Pharaoh still stubborn. The Israelites still stuck. And yet, it is precisely here that God introduces the ritual that will define the Jewish people forever: Pesach. This is before freedom, before the sea splits, and before anything is actually resolved. That timing matters. 

God doesn’t wait for things to settle down before teaching the Israelites how to mark time, how to gather, or how to tell their story. The first mitzvah given to the Jewish people as a people is the sanctification of the new moon: “this month shall be for you the first of months.” In the middle of disruption, God says to pay attention to what truly matters. Mark it. Name it. Share it. 

And then comes the very Jewish instruction to eat together. Not alone, not in silence, but together. Whether it’s families, neighbors, or community, and with questions, with storytelling, or with ritual, liberation, the Torah seems to insist, is not a solo act. 

There’s a line that always gets me in this parshah: “And the people bowed their heads and worshiped.” Nothing is fixed yet. Pharaoh hasn’t let them go. The future is uncertain. And still, the people pause. They ground themselves. They show up for one another. That feels like a roadmap for us. 

We don’t get to control the chaos of the world, but we do get to choose where we focus our energy, how we build community, and who we refuse to abandon along the way. We get to keep telling our story, even when it’s messy. Especially when it’s messy. 

Parshat Bo reminds us that strength isn’t found in pretending everything is fine. It’s found in gathering anyway. It’s found in marking what matters. It’s found in trusting that community, because that imperfect, caring, stubbornly hopeful community is how we make it through the darkness and toward whatever light comes next. 

And maybe that’s enough for now. 

Trust as Sacred Work

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This is the d’var Torah I delivered at Congregation Neveh Shalom on January 16, 2026.

Most of us know the feeling of trying to do the right thing and watching it backfire. You speak up, show up, follow through, and instead of things getting better, they get harder. The conversation goes sideways. The plan creates more stress. The trust you thought you had starts to crack. 

That is exactly where Parashat Va’era begins. 

Moses has done what God asked. He confronted Pharaoh. He told the truth. And the result? The Israelites’ suffering intensifies, and their disappointment turns toward Moses himself. “Why did you make things worse?” they ask. Trust, fragile to begin with, begins to unravel. 

God’s response is striking. Instead of changing course or dismissing the people’s pain, God repeats a steady refrain: I am Adonai. I am still here. I have not forgotten you. Even when trust feels thin, the relationship endures. 

Va’era teaches us that liberation is not only about breaking chains. It is about rebuilding trust. A people shaped by injustice cannot move toward freedom until something internal begins to heal, belief in leadership, in one another, and in the possibility that tomorrow can be different from today. 

The plagues come one by one, not all at once. Redemption unfolds gradually, asking the people to stay engaged, to listen again after disappointment, to risk hope when it would be easier to retreat. Torah insists that moral courage is not dramatic or instantaneous. It is relational. It is sustained. It is built over time. 

That message matters deeply in our fractured world. When injustice feels overwhelming, the temptation is to disengage, to decide that what is broken is too big, too entrenched, too exhausting to confront. But Torah will not let us off the hook so easily. As Martin Luther King Jr. taught, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Va’era pushes us to understand that injustice, left unchallenged, corrodes the entire moral fabric of a community. 

Trust does not mean ignoring harm or rushing past pain. The Israelites’ anger is understandable. Their suffering is real. Trust begins when leaders listen, when communities hold space for truth, and when accountability replaces defensiveness. 

Building trust is sacred work. It is how Torah becomes a living moral compass, guiding us toward justice with courage, humility, and relationship at the center. Redemption does not arrive all at once. It begins when we choose, again and again, to stand together and refuse to accept a broken world as inevitable. 

When Fear Forgets the Full Story

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This is the d’var Torah I delivered at Congregation Neveh Shalom on January 9, 2026.

We open the book of Shemot with a sentence that should stop us in our tracks: Vayakam melech chadash al Mitzrayim asher lo yada et Yosef. “A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.” Don’t be fooled into thinking this is merely about historical ignorance. This line is about moral failure. Pharaoh didn’t simply lack information; he chose a story that erased context, contribution, and complexity. And that choice reshaped an entire society. 

Joseph saved Egypt. He organized resources, prevented starvation, and ensured the stability of the nation. The Israelites were not strangers; they were woven into the fabric of Egyptian life. But a shift in leadership brought a shift in narrative. The people were reframed from neighbors to numbers, from contributors to threats. Fear took the place of memory. And once fear took hold, violence was no longer far behind.

The Torah is not subtle about what comes next. When leaders stop seeing people as whole human beings and start treating them as problems to be managed, policies harden. Language sharpens. Force becomes normalized.

We’re watching this pattern unfold in real time with the deployment of ICE agents into communities already living in vulnerability and fear. If you were shocked by the violence in Minneapolis, you’re not alone. The truly worrisome part is that the shock of this murder will wear off, but the growing suspicion, the escalating tactics, the divisive rhetoric will only continue until we remember our collective humanity. These are not isolated incidents. They are what happens when you reach for control before understanding, enforcement before empathy.

I promise we are capable of putting ourselves in anyone’s shoes. Even Pharaoh, as hard as that is to believe. What might a new ruler like Pharaoh be going through? Perhaps he feels overwhelmed with anxiety. Anxiety about safety, borders, power, and identity. And this anxiety, when left unchecked, looks for someone to blame. It pushes leaders and systems to act first and ask questions later. The Torah warns us where that road leads. 

Pharaoh’s greatest sin was not cruelty; it was the convenience of it. Forgetting Joseph made oppression easier. Remembering would have required him to slow down, to reckon with history, and to recognize shared humanity. Knowing the full story complicates fear. It resists the urge to flatten people into categories or threats.

You may have heard this quote by Mark Twain from The Innocents Abroad: “Travel is fatal to prejudice.” But listen to the whole thing:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Personally, I would extend this beyond literal travel from place to place. “Travel” means knowing. Knowing is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. We – and Pharaoh – have forgotten what that means. This lesson matters now. Especially when rhetoric turns neighbors into dangers, and enforcement becomes a substitute for relationship.

Parshat Shemotchallenges us to be an am, a people who remember, even when remembering is inconvenient. To insist on nuance when the world wants slogans. To ask who is being erased when fear sets the agenda.

And quietly, insistently, it asks us to notice when old patterns resurface, when blame begins to spread too easily, when entire communities are held responsible for forces beyond their control.

Because the Torah knows this truth well: when leaders decide they no longer “know” the people in their care, injustice is never far behind. Our task is to refuse that forgetting — and to choose memory, humanity, and moral courage instead.

Inheriting an Imperfect Legacy

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This is the d’var Torah I delivered at Congregation Neveh Shalom on January 3, 2026.

There’s something about the start of a new year that invites both hope and honesty. We make lists, set intentions, and imagine fresh beginnings, while quietly carrying the weight of what came before. Years don’t arrive with a clean slate; they arrive with history. Families. Communities. Stories we didn’t choose but nonetheless inherit. Parashat Vayechi, the closing chapter of Genesis, understands this deeply. It is a parshah about endings that shape beginnings, about blessings given with eyes wide open to imperfection. 

Vayechi finds Jacob at the end of his life. He gathers his children and grandchildren, blesses them, and offers words that are as much reckoning as they are hope. This is not a sentimental wrap-up. Jacob reopens old wounds, names past failures, and still insists on blessing. He crosses his hands to bless Ephraim over Menashe, disrupts expectations, and reminds us that the future is not a simple extension of the past. 

When Jacob blesses Joseph’s sons, Joseph tries to correct him. The elder should receive the greater blessing. Jacob refuses. He sees something Joseph does not. The Torah tells us, sikeil et yadav—he crossed his hands deliberately. Jacob is not confused or nostalgic. He is intentional. He knows this family’s story too well to pretend that legacy is neat or linear. Blessing, in his world, is not about perfection. It is about possibility. 

This feels especially resonant as we step into a new year. We inherit imperfect legacies, personal and communal. We carry the gifts of those who came before us alongside their mistakes. Judaism never asks us to erase that complexity. Instead, it asks us to bless within it. To tell the truth about where we’ve been and still say yes to where we’re going. 

Jacob blesses his progeny, knowing exactly who they are. Some are impulsive. Some are violent. Some are capable of greatness and harm in equal measure. And still, blessing. Not denial. Not absolution. Blessing as responsibility. Blessing as charge. 

As we begin this new year, Vayechi offers a quiet but powerful invitation: let what you inherit retain all its honest imperfections and complexities. Acknowledge the broken pieces without letting them define the future. Bless what is, even as we commit to shaping what could be. We are not asked to be perfect inheritors of our past, only faithful stewards of what comes next. May this year be one where we cross our hands when needed, bless with courage, and build forward with wisdom earned, not despite our imperfect legacy, but because we’ve learned from it.